Chapter 12
In: Sights, Sounds, and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions
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Abstract
Although the characterization of show trials tends to be a negative attribute, there are good reasons to conceive of certain criminal procedures, especially those that relate to massive traumatic events, as forms of theatre. In this chapter I argue that, despite the impossibility of reaching objective truths or justice, international criminal trials have a modest (but realistic) capacity for historical reconstruction of major traumatic events, and that conceiving them as aesthetic experiences – such as theatre – allows us to engage artistically with them. As corollaries to both of these claims, I argue that interpretation is a dialogical process in which the observer and the observed are fused to recreate the object of experience – or put differently, the distinction between object and subject is dissolved, and thus international criminal trials can be more about historical understanding and public healing than technical adherence to judicial constraints.